Sunday, November 18, 2007

Weekend Reading

The hack of the yearIn August, Swedish hacker Dan Egerstad gained access to sensitive embassy, NGO and corporate email accounts. Were they captured from the clutches of hackers? Or were they being used by spies? Patrick Gray investigates the most sensational hack of 2007.

==================================================================How to lock up laptop securityEven before her state of California put a stake in the ground regarding public disclosure of data breaches, Christy Quinlan could see the wisdom in encrypting client data on mobile devices. Shortly after Quinlan became CIO of California’s Department of Health Care Services in 2005, one of the agency’s partners lost a computer.

The contractor had to notify everyone who might have been affected, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars. And while Quinlan’s staff had not lost the laptop, they still spent much of the week before a holiday co-ordinating with the contractor to determine the possible scope of the security breach and then ensuring swift and proper notification. "Once information is on the loose, you can never get it back," Quinlan says.

==================================================================Google: In Search of ItselfIn a span of four days earlier this month, Google launched an initiative to enable social networking tools to work across dozens of web sites and rounded up 33 partners to develop software to power a new generation of cell phones. While these efforts illustrate Google's determination to keep expanding its territory, they also increase the challenges faced by the $200 billion company. And they pose a question that seems to crop up more and more these days: Where is Google headed?

==================================================================Russia Casts A Selective Net in Piracy CrackdownThe newspaper Novaya Gazeta, one of the last outposts of critical journalism in Russia, suspended publication of its regional edition in the southern city of Samara on Monday after prosecutors opened a criminal case against its editor, alleging that his publication used unlicensed software. The case is part of a larger assault on independent news media, advocacy organizations and political activists, according to government critics. But it is one that is specifically tailored to deflect foreign criticism.

==================================================================Phone Phreaks Use Caller-ID SpoofingAn Ohio man has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge for being part of a gang of "swatters" -- one of them blind -- who used Caller ID spoofing to phone the police with fake hostage crises, sending armed cops bursting into the homes of innocent people.

==================================================================German amateur code breaker defeats ColossusIn an ironic twist, a British team operating a World War II codebreaking computer has been beaten in a cipher-breaking contest by a German.